Mexican Flood Kills At Least 333, Displaces 253,000 People

Misery deepens with rain in Mexico

Town evacuated as dam nears breaking point with fresh
rains

Associated Press, Oct. 11, 1999

TEZIUTLAN, Mexico, Oct. 11 — It did not even have a name, the storm
responsible for what the president called Mexico’s worst disaster of the decade.
Its winds never reached the tropical-storm speed that would have earned it more
than a number. But Tropical Depression No. 11 was deadlier than any hurricane in
the region this year.

So far, officials have confirmed 333 deaths. But by all accounts the true
number of dead is higher. Unofficial counts by local newspapers — based on
unconfirmed accounts from local officials and witnesses — ran as high as 600.

The full scale of the disaster is only slowly becoming apparent. A series of
weather fronts, capped by the tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico, dumped
heavy rain on much of eastern, southern and central Mexico for a week or more.
In much of the region, it continues to rain.

Washed-out bridges and roads isolated hundreds of communities. Landslides
destroyed or damaged houses in dozens of towns and villages. People were carried
away by floodwaters.

Even large cities, such as the Tabasco state capital of Villahermosa, were so
gravely flooded that streets became canals for boats ferrying furniture from
inundated houses, and citizens angry over the government's slowness clashed with
police.

DAM READY TO CRACK

In Tenango, 100 miles northeast of Mexico City, a foot-wide crack appeared in
the face of a turn-of-the-century, U.S.-built dam, which towers 70 feet above
the town.

Authorities evacuated 3,000 residents and brought in a fleet of dump trucks
to pile gravel and rock mixed with lime in front of the dam. They worked into
the night Sunday. "The engineers thought it was going to break," said evacuee
Jose Luis Gonzalez, 40.

In Teziutlan, where the largest number of deaths have been recorded, rain
fell for 60 hours without a break — 30 inches in all, three-quarters of what New
York gets in an entire year.

The rain forced closure of schools and most of the 480 clothing factories
that make blue jeans and other goods for U.S. export.

DEVASTATING SLIDES

So the residents of La Aurora, a poor neighborhood built under a cliffside
cemetery, were huddled at home rather than at work or school when the mudslide
rolled over their houses.

The rain had been pounding for three days when Dario Padilla left his house
and made the sodden trek to a shop to buy tortillas.

He was on his way back, with about 100 yards to go, when he saw the hillside
above his neighborhood collapse in an avalanche of mud. Within seconds his
house, the houses of two relatives and about 25 other neighbors’ homes were
buried.

His wife, his stepchildren and several grandchildren were among those killed.

"It took all my family in one blow," said the 55-year-old retired postal
worker, his voice breaking as he watched ambulances carry victims to the morgue
and a series of funeral processions trudge into the cemetery next door. "I went
in but I sank in the mud. Some neighbors pulled me out," he said.

By Sunday morning, rescue workers had pulled the corpses of 15 people from
the ruins of Padilla’s house and his relatives’ two homes.

The victims included his wife, five of his stepchildren and several
grandchildren and in-laws. Every member of his household was apparently killed.

THE GRIM SEARCH

On Sunday, hundreds of soldiers, policemen, firefighters and body-detecting
dogs were still slopping through mud made even more sodden by more heavy rain.
They scraped mud away from toppled concrete walls, then attacked the walls with
clanging picks and sledgehammers until the sick-sweet smell of decaying flesh
told them they were close to yet another victim.

At the town’s cathedral, the regional bishop, Monsignor Lorenzo Cardenas
Aregullin, led a Mass for the victims of the disaster, and read a message of
condolence from Pope John Paul II.

"Why does God conserve our lives?" the bishop asked. "So we can be human. So
we can help (the victims) however we can."

Outside the cathedral, residents complained that government help had been
late in coming. When neighbors were pulling bodies from the muck on Tuesday,
they said, radio stations were reporting that there were no apparent problems in
the region. The military, which is leading the rescue effort, didn’t arrive
until Thursday afternoon.

Many have urged President Ernesto Zedillo to call for foreign aid, but
Zedillo has said: "The Mexicans can do it alone."

He toured the stricken areas Friday and Saturday and pledged to send more
civilian and military personnel to help the victims throughout states along the
Gulf of Mexico. "We won’t fail you," he promised Saturday night.

CLASHES WITH POLICE

Angry over sandbagging that has swamped their neighborhoods and furious that
the government hasn't done more to help, hundreds of people in Tabasco's flooded
capital clashed Sunday with police, who beat and arrested many of them.

In Villahermosa, a city of 465,000 people that is 400 miles east of Mexico
City, many weren't willing to accept promises. Much of the city has been under
water for a week, and the water was rising on Sunday.

As heavy rains poured across the region, anger mounted among survivors, who
accused the government of arriving late and making bad decisions.

On Saturday night and again Sunday morning, hundreds of Villahermosa
residents blocked a highway in the city's north to protest government-built
barriers that have kept water from pouring into certain areas, but increased the
flooding in others.

Police dragged people by the hair, beat them with batons and used tear gas in
an effort to break up the demonstration. They arrested at least 100 people,
including eight children and a pregnant woman. "Instead of helping us, they beat
us with sticks. Why?" said Carmen Arellano, 37. Most of those arrested were
released, but 15 were charged with damaging federal property — the highway.

At Villahermosa's state penitentiary, 100 prisoners staged a small riot
Saturday night, shouting from the prison's roof to reporters outside that the
prison was flooded.

"We're in the middle of water," one screamed. "We need food and drinking
water."

Time Magazine Online:Oct.11. 1999
A tropical depression raging in the Gulf of Mexico has covered the area in 2 1/2 feet of water in just a few days — more than a year's worth of rainfall.

Death toll rises after Mexico flood

More than 320 confirmed dead, more rain forecast
Sunday

MSNBC -- Oct. 10, 1999

TEZUITLAN, Mexico, Oct 10 -- Mexican soldiers attacked the earth with picks,
shovels and sledgehammers in search of dozens of bodies believed buried in a
massive mudslide, as forecasters predicted more rain Sunday.

By Saturday morning, 88 bodies had been pulled from the mounds of mud and
crushed homes in Teziutlan, 110 miles east of Mexico City.

In all, at least 321 people were confirmed dead in last week’s flooding,
which President Ernesto Zedillo called Mexico’s worst disaster this decade.

But as flood victims across southeastern Mexico urged the president to call
for foreign aid, Zedillo assured them "the Mexicans can do it alone."

On a tour of the disaster zone Friday, Zedillo promised the government would
help rebuild houses, and ordered the military to redouble its efforts to carry
aid to remote villages cut off by blocked roads and downed telephone lines. In
Gutierrez Zamora, Zedillo was curt with victims who crowded around him demanding
aid.

"Will you let me speak?" he told one man who repeatedly interrupted him, the
Mexico City daily Reforma reported Saturday. "I’m the president of the republic.
If you talk again I’ll make you pay. Shut up already."

Aid organizations set up collection centers in the capital, and appealed for
donations of water, food, medicine, clothing and blankets.

More than 253,000 people have been affected by floods. Nearly 70,000 people
were being housed in shelters throughout the Gulf states, the Interior ministry
said.

With drinkable water scarce, officials warned of possible outbreaks of
cholera. Authorities in Veracruz said they already had seen cases of dengue, a
mosquito-borne illness, and "uncountable cases" of respiratory, skin, and
stomach infections, the state news agency Notimex reported.

"No resource is enough to cover the totality of necessities," said Gabriel
Riande Juárez, a health official in the city of Coatzacoalcos, according to
Notimex. The federal health ministry said it had distributed 850 tons of
medicine to six of the worst-hit states.

The number of dead found in Teziutlan included about 50 people, all in La
Aurora neighborhood, where a clifftop cemetery tore down a hillside Tuesday and
swept away dozens of homes in the neighborhood.

Soldiers at the scene Saturday pulled the bodies of two boys — Jose Gonzalez
Trujillo, 13, and his 11-year-old brother, Pablo — from the mound of earth and
tangled wreckage of homes.Their parents and four siblings, found a day earlier,
were buried earlier Saturday in a simple ceremony.

Searchers located the boys after they discovered bright yellow corn meal
scattered on the black mud. "Next to their beds had been sacks of ground corn,"
said the Rev. Daniel Lopez, pastor of the family’s parish, The Final Call Church
of God.

Many families were home when the disaster hit, since schools and some
factories were closed because of heavy rains.

Though sunshine broke through cloud drifts Saturday, rivers continued to rise
in Villahermosa, 400 miles east of Mexico City, and flooded some of the few
neighborhoods not already under water.

River levels were falling in other areas, but the National Water Commission
warned that a Pacific storm threatened more rain for Mexico’s west coast,
Notimex said.